PAPER TIGER
(With appologies to William Blake)
Tiger! Tiger! In the zoo
Plodding in and out of view,
Do you await the moon and stars
To prowl the forest of your bars?
Bars in front and bars behind
Dim the furnace of your mind.
Burns what sorrow in your eye
Before their awful symmetry?
What torments does your brain engage;
What appetites, unsated, rage
When agonies of hunger cheat
Daily with unconquered meat?
Lanquid in the scanty straw
Curls, unslipped, a lethal claw
And all your latent terrors lie
Lamb-like in your apathy.
Tiger! Tiger! In the zoo
Was it really one of you,
Bright in Blake's immortal eye
Which framed his burning poetry?
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